Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/71

Rh who had held their position from a time preceding the Christian era ; and, so far as the north of the peninsula is concerned, this fact may be taken as the starting-point in any examination of the settlement of the peoples who subsequently swarmed into the empire. That position, before the time with which I am concerned, had been successively disturbed by the inroads of various races. In view, however, of the importance which has always attached to the Slav element in the Balkan peninsula, and of the influence of its members upon the various populations with which they came in contact, it is necessary to remember that they were among the first and most widespread of the races which inhabited that great district within historical times. It has been contended that the Slavs had even settled so far south as the Peloponnesus itself, and the evidence in support of this theory has been the statement of the Byzantine writers that in the west of that peninsula there were people, called Slavs by these writers, who were of a different race and who spoke a different language from the Greeks. It has, however, I think, been clearly shown that while in the capital these settlers were regarded as hostile, their Greek neighbors of the same period looked upon them as brothers and as liberators. In all probability they were Albanians — a people who in the Middle Ages were regarded as the descendants of the Macedonian race to which Alexander the Great belonged.

The Huns

The Huns, a Turanian people, had in the fifth century invaded the territory of the Slavs, devastating whole provinces and creating wastes for their cattle. They formed part of the great Asiatic race which was destined to give so much trouble to the empire and finally to overthrow it. The Byzantine writers correctly called them Turks. Like all of their race, they were a nomadic people. During the ninth and tenth centuries they overran Illyria and Macedonia, and had devastated Attica. After the many incursions of these and other similar races, we continually find that, while